Thursday, February 11, 2016

Himmler Advocates Slaughter of Russian Soldiers, Oct 24, 1943

And we'll have to defeat them, smash them, and slaughter them [abschlacten]. When a people like the Russians already have their whole army full of everything from 16 year-olds to 50 or 55 year-olds, then reason tells us that this whole mass of people is coming to an end, like everything on this earth.

This slaughter was clearly framed in the context of ethnic cleansing:

When you know that, the evolutionary and racial development of the Slavic peoples, then you know that we have a task to do if we wish to purify these areas – and we must do that, if we want to live.

Himmler advocated the creation of "an area in which there will be no one but Germans and Teutons, approximately 1,000 kilometres from the old German Reich border." There would clearly be catastrophic consequences for non-Germans in that zone, and people who had the most "Mongolian" blood by Himmler's reckoning would have the lowest value to justify being kept alive.

The slaughter of Russian soldiers was to be part of a process in which Russians would eventually disappear - "this whole mass of people is coming to an end." Himmler also bemoans the fact that "a Russian military generation consists of two and a half to three times as many men as a German military generation." The killing of soldiers therefore has a genocidal rationale that makes it far more criminal than an act of war. The extinction of the Russian people in Europe, by one means or another, is clearly a long-term goal.

10 comments:

Nice bit of misrepresentation and quoting out of context there JH. Fancy beginning a quote with the word "And." lol

Himmler was talking about the Red Army when he said "we'll have to defeat them, smash them, and slaughter them."

"These are all things which are so obvious, that we will never become faint-hearted. That a war with millions of Russians, this brutally led mass from the East, involves the greatest difficulties was clear from the outset. We can confidently predict that more difficulties are on their way. We are going to go through many tight spots and bear many burdens. The Russian will, this winter, this fall, he's already beginning to do it, he will return this winter with a desperate army of certainly far more than one hundred divisions. And we'll have to defeat them, smash them, and slaughter them [abschlacten]. When a people like the Russians already have their whole army full of everything from 16 year-olds to 50 or 55 year-olds, then reason tells us that this whole mass of people is coming to an end, like everything on this earth."

Elsewhere, General Patton was advocating pretty much the same thing about German forces:

"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don't dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.

Some of you men are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it's not dirt, it's the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you'll know what to do.

I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.

There will be some complaints that we're pushing our people too hard. I don't give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed."

Naturally smashing the Soviet armies also included starving them to death in POW camps, overworking them to death, experimenting on them and allowing them to freeze to death in inadequate or nonexistent shelters.I wonder why the Soviets didn't like Germans. Such a mystery.

And we'll have to defeat them, smash them, and slaughter them [abschlacten]. When a people like the Russians already have their whole army full of everything from 16 year-olds to 50 or 55 year-olds, then reason tells us that this whole mass of people is coming to an end, like everything on this earth.

This slaughter was clearly framed in the context of ethnic cleansing:

When you know that, the evolutionary and racial development of the Slavic peoples, then you know that we have a task to do if we wish to purify these areas – and we must do that, if we want to live.

I've already shown that you've lied about the "slaughter", as Himmler was specifically talking about "more than one hundred divisions" he expect the Soviets to throw against them in the winter of 43/44.

But your second claim:

This slaughter was clearly framed in the context of ethnic cleansing:

Is bullshit as well. The paragraph from which you quote-mined the "slaughter" bit—and misrepresented what Himmler was talking about to boot—appears 18 PARAGRAPHS AFTER the paragraph containing the "purify these areas", where Himmler was talking about the HISTORY of the Volksdeutsche:

"When you know that, the evolutionary and racial development of the Slavic peoples, then you know that we have a task to do if we wish to purify these areas – and we must do that, if we want to live. The only task can be: clear domination, clear detachment, without unnecessary insults, because every once in a while, some individual factor – some part of our own blood, which is a proud blood – causes such a person to take offense, making us unnecessary enemies."

Furthermore, other parts of the speech show that your claim that Himmler intended to cleanse the whole area of Slavs, make it a purely German settlement and end the Slavic race, is pure crap:

"When one has this attitude, and this knowledge of the history of the Slavs and their way of thinking, then it will only be a matter of education that the Slavs, in a Gau like this one in the broad expanse of the East, must be ruled without unnecessary severity, but never with completely inappropriate softness. Brutal, where necessary, clear in one's own attitude, and never let oneself go."

"If we rule this Slavic people correctly, we can derive endless values out of this mass man, and endless strength for Germany. I am also of the opinion that it is better for a Russian or a Pole to die in this world struggle, if I can save a German, German blood, for the same struggle."

"Furthermore, other parts of the speech show that your claim that Himmler intended to cleanse the whole area of Slavs, make it a purely German settlement and end the Slavic race, is pure crap"

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies....

The truth of the matter is that Himmler's intentions towards the slavs were clearly expressed. Not a purely exterminatory policy but an unbelievably harsh one based around slave labor and exploitation. This is conveyed in similar statements from Erik Koch and Hermann Goering. The Nazi intentions in the east were well documented. Slavs were to have no real legal rights, limited education, would be deported in large numbers to Germany as slave labor, and would be taught to obey Germans. This general attitude is conveyed in the next paragraph of the very speech that you quoted

"If we rule this Slavic people correctly, we can derive endless values out of this mass man, and endless strength for Germany. I am also of the opinion that it is better for a Russian or a Pole to die in this world struggle, if I can save a German, German blood, for the same struggle."

Thus Himmler was hardly moderate or favorable towards the Russians. In his 1943 Kharkov speech he advocated that Russians who were not killed in battle be used as slave labor for the Reich. Hitler's statements on the Slavs were highly indicative of a view on them as inferior and worthless as anything but slaves. Hans Frank is documented and proven to advocate the elimination of the Polish Nation and the destruction of their national character.

The Russian people would have faced Armageddon had your heroes won - those that would not have perished in the starvation plan would have been made into footstool people. This is a matter of historical fact. Goering in 1941 was on the record as favoring reduction of slavic populations.

To deny that the German attitude towards slavic peoples was anything but decimatory and contemptuous is to lie.

I request that the daft rabbit be banned form posting. His omissions are becoming a major detriment to discussion.

The last of these threads contains an excerpt from Gerlach's Kalkulierte Morde referring to certain utterances of Himmler's at the Wewelsburg:

«Thus the Reichsführer-SS and Head of the German Police, Heinrich Himmler, "at the beginning of 1941, before the start of the campaign against Russia, held [a speech] on the Wewelsburg, in which he stated that the purpose of the Russian campaign was the decimation of the Slav population by thirty million", as the former Head of SS and Police von dem Bach-Zelewski testified in 1946 at Nuremberg. Written orders for this annihilation of Slavs had not existed. At the speech twelve Gruppenführer (higher SS officers) were said to have been present. In fact the mentioned conference of the SS-Gruppenführer on the Wewelsburg with Himmler took place only between 12 and 15 June. According to a later deposition of the Head of the Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS, Karl Wolff, what Himmler had said on the Wewelsburg was that the death of these millions of people was not the goal, but would be the consequence of the war against the USSR. To this Bach-Zelewski, at the criminal trial against Wolff, added that Himmler had back then predicted that military actions and crises of food supply would lead to this high number of victims. Himmler’s announcement, however, came very late and was very vague, just like the food planners’ project left many things open. Coincidence or not, two days before the meeting on the Wewelsburg Himmler had talked with Backe about the agriculture of the Soviet regions to be occupied.»

"The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death.

It is my opinion - and here, I believe, I am speaking to men [p. 3] who already understand this - that we must conduct the war and our campaign on these lines:-how can we take the most men from the Russians-dead or alive? We shall do it by killing them or taking them prisoner and [p. 4] really putting them to work, by endeavoring to gain as much control as possible over any territory we occupy, and by leaving empty of people any territory we dispose of, any areas we make over to the enemy. Either they must be deported and will be used as labour in Germany for Germany, or they will just die in battle. To hand people back again, giving the enemy workers once more and enabling him to recruit again,-that I think, taking the broad view, would be absolutely wrong. That could not be advocated."